Submitted by Steve Winicker
LAST WEEKENDS SHOP ACTIVITY
On Tuesday Sarah and I dumped ashes, cleaned out the firebox and removed the arch brick, most into the cab with the larger bricks left in the firebox on the floor due to lack of room in the cab. When we have a crew, we can load them out on a pallet for winter storage. The rest of the week was spent preparing for the Autumn Color Express and manning the train and the street sales booth. Can’t say what happened on the train but in Hinton we set up around 7 Friday Saturday and Sunday and sold t-shirts and other items of interest to those with cash until four or five, then packed up and headed to the Sleep Inn in beautiful Beaver West Virginia. If you find yourself in Beaver this is a nice inexpensive motel. While not extremely profitable we did have a good time eating and making new acquaintances and looking at the local color. Today, Wednesday, Carl and I spent time continuing with the ultrasound readings on #1.
UPCOMING ACTIVITIES
I hope to continue with cleaning out the firebox, flues and front end of the locomotive. If by some chance a herd of folks show up to work on the locomotive, I can come up with additional fun projects for folks to do. It appears that Mr. Gramling is going to pick up his locomotive and haul it to ??? on Sunday.
SAFETY SENSE
Safety related note.
In the future do not run electrical cords out the middle door on either end of the building. Route them around the overhead doors or use the outside outlets. This week I found a very nice new, heavy duty extension cord that was made worthless because it was laid out through the man door which was then allowed to close. The bottom of these doors have fairly sharp sheet metal edges which can slice off insulation. The cord I removed from service had razor-sharp cuts down to bare wire in three evenly spaced areas on the cord. Other cords with similar but not as extensive damage were noted in the shop. All cords should be inspected before they are used.
Safety Sense
An audit is defined as a systematic or methodical review; to examine with intent to verify.
Audits can apply to your job. From a safety standpoint there is only one way to do a job – the safe way. Safety always needs to be the first consideration in everything we do. It is possible that we may not always be doing this, so our continuing efforts to review or think about our jobs is auditing. If we take the time to at least mentally think out the steps that we need to go through to perform a task, we can audit those steps to ensure we are safe.
Auditing ourselves….Look at these things prior to completing a task…
– PPE, did we have the correct eye protection? The correct gloves? Protective footwear?
– Do we need any special PPE such as a chemical apron or a harness?
– Is our PPE in good condition?
– Do we have the correct tools and are they in good shape?
– Do we know how to operate the tools or equipment?
– Do we know how to accomplish the task safely?
– Do we know the harmful energy sources around the area and have we isolated them?
These are a just a few of the questions we should ask. However, they include some of the most important ones. Ensure you do a quick audit, prior to accomplishing a task. A more thorough one should be done if we’re doing something for the first time or for the first time in a long time.
SAFETY IS JOB 1
SAFETY FIRST ALWAYS
